The Beats go on: Denver honors prodigal son Neal Cassady

Forty-three years after the death of Beat Generation icon Neal Cassady, Denver is lauding its most famous prodigal son as one of its favorite ones.

Friday marks the Neal Cassady Birthday Bash, honoring the man who was muse to such creative spirits as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Ken Kesey.

The free event, hosted by the Mercury Cafe, coincides with the anniversary of Cassady's death — his birthday is four days later. It will feature music, poetry readings and a clip from a new documentary about the man's life and times.

Not bad for a kid who grew up in Larimer Street flophouses, did time in jail and bragged about boosting 500 cars by the time he was 20, largely for the pure joy of getting behind the wheel and going — anywhere.

Cassady, after all, was the charismatic model for Dean Moriarty, the lead-footed, highway-loving hero of Kerouac's "On the Road."

More than a half-century after the novel's publication, Cassady — who would have turned 85 on Feb. 8 — remains a revered figure, captivating yet another youthful generation.

"There is just something about Neal Cassady that fires the imagination of people," says Mark Bliesener, one of the event's organizers. "This is a community birthday celebration. I think it's great that Denver is honoring him, since he grew up here and loved this city so much."

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Although in his prime in the 1950s and 1960s, Cassady remains part of the culture. Along with appearing in Kerouac's work, including "Visions of Cody," Ginsberg gave his friend and sometime lover a shout-out in "Howl" — (N.C., secret hero of these poems.)

He appears in Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test." In the Grateful Dead song "The Other One," he is "Cowboy Neal at the wheel of the bus." And he's been immortalized in film: Nick Nolte played him in "Heart Beat," a 1980 film about his circle.

Cassady introduced Jack Kerouac to jazz at the Rossonian Hotel in Five Points.
(Photos by Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post )

Another film, a documentary, is on the way. A local team is putting the finishing touches on "Neal Cassady: The Denver Years." A 12-minute trailer will be screened at the Mercury Cafe bash.

"It's been a labor of love," says Heather Dalton, 38, director and producer of the film. "I'm a born and bred Denver girl. When I read 'On the Road,' I became enamored with the Dean Moriarty character. I felt such an affinity.

"Being able to tell Cassady's story and seeing the city through his eyes was like opening up a new world of Denver to me," she says.

Like so many indie filmmakers, Dalton, creative services manager at Colorado Public Television, "maxed out a few credit cards" since starting on the movie in 2006. And she has some ideas on why Cassady and company still enthrall so many young people.

"I think it's because they represent a uniquely American rite of passage," Dalton says. "It's about questioning authority, figuring out your spirituality and sexuality and place in the world.

"They broke free of social norms," she said. "The end result for many of them was rather tragic, but it's their searching that is what's so compelling."

Cassady died Feb. 4, 1968, four days shy of his 42nd birthday, in a hospital in Mexico. He had been found in a coma alongside railroad tracks after attending a wedding in San Miguel de Allende.

Although a handsome, muscular man who was catnip to both sexes, Cassady's health had been taxed by years of drug use, notably the Benzedrine that fueled his marathon cross-country jaunts.

That's the Cassady of wild-man legend. Others knew a more thoughtful, introspective man.

"To me he was just our daddy," says his daughter, Jami Cassady, who grew up in the Bay Area and still lives in California. Now 61, she was in second grade when "On the Road" came out.

"Until I was 14 I didn't know anything about any of this," she says. "He was the man who took me to ballet class. We lived in the suburbs, and he went to work each day for the railroad."

Granted, there were lots of interesting friends traipsing through the house, which Neal Cassady shared with his wife, Carolyn, until their divorce. Kerouac and Ginsberg were regular visitors and her surrogate uncles.

But she didn't read "On the Road" until a few years ago, and found in a bit unsettling. "I thought, 'Ew, he was kind of a creep,' or at least that character (Moriarty) was."

Jami Cassady, who will attend the bash with her brother, John Allen (their sister Cathy Sylvia won't be along), does recall a moment when she realized the household was a tad different than her classmates'.

She was 15 and smoking marijuana for the first time with a friend. "So we lit the joint and I thought, 'Whoa, so that's what I've been smelling in the house,' " she said with a laugh.

Jami Cassady will be accompanied by her husband, and the two will celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary during their visit. They were married on her dad's birthday.

"My father was so in tune with children," she says. "Even at my age it's a vibrant and wonderful memory. I feel really blessed."

David Amram, a pioneering jazz French horn player who was friends with Cassady and Kerouac, will travel from his home in upstate New York for the event. He will play "Pull My Daisy," his collaboration with Kerouac.

"Neal was an extraordinary guy who grew up struggling but managed to educate himself," Amram says. "He was a brilliant guy. He reminded me of certain great athletes, like Mickey Mantle or Muhammad Ali, who had more talent and drive and desire than their systems could handle.

"Neal never really found an outlet for his talent, but he really worked hard to be a full-time writer." Cassady did manage to produce an autobiography, "The First Third."

Amram remembers a conversation with Cassady in the late 1960s, when his friend was driving author Ken Kesey's busload of hippies and hangers-on around the U.S.

"He told me he was so tired of being used as a clown and a sort of trained bear," Amram says. "They expected him to live up to his character in Jack's book."

That still bothers Amram.

"Neal was just an amazing person who never really found his outlet," he says.

But Cassady's spirit endures. The Rossonian Hotel, where the jazz-mad Cassady turned Kerouac on to the music, still stands in Five Points.

And if you go to My Brothers Bar at 2376 15th St., you'll find a framed letter an 18-year-old Cassady wrote from the reformatory in Buena Vista, where he was doing time for possessing stolen goods. He asked Justin Brierly, his mentor and teacher at East High School, to settle his $4 tab.

Toast to Neal Cassady

Neal Cassady, who grew up in Denver and became a major figure of the Beat Generation before his death in 1968, will be honored Friday from 8 to 10 p.m. with a bash at the Mercury Cafe, 2199 California St. The event is free.

Along with poetry and prose readings, two of Cassady's children, Jami and John Allen Cassady, are slated to appear.

A 12-minute trailer of a documentary film, "Neal Cassady: The Denver Years," will be shown. Musician David Amram will perform "Pull My Daisy," a collaborative piece he created with Jack Kerouac.

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